On television.

Asteroids, Teen Drinking, Burning Teddy Bears . . . It Hasn't Been This Bad Since The Last Sweeps Month

February 21, 1997|By Steve Johnson, Tribune Television Critic.

Is everybody really nervous yet?

If you've been paying attention to local news over the past few weeks, you ought to be, because it's Sweeps month. In a series of "special" reports, the primary information sources for too many of our neighbors have warned us about children's clothing, ill-fitting shoes, the Internet, halogen lamps, portable gasoline containers, cigars, asteroids, ultrasounds, teenage drinking, high-speed chases, the Millennium and, unintentionally, sportscasters posing as car salesmen.

FOR THE RECORD - Additional material published March 3, 1997:- Clarification 1: In a Feb. 21 column on local television news Sweeps pieces, an item may have left readers with a mistaken impression. The section about various stations' handling of video of a motorcycle daredevil's final stunt stated that WFLD-Ch. 32 showed "all" of the video. While the channel did show more of the man plunging to his death than did its local rivals, the station's news director points out that the channel did not show the man actually hitting the ground. The WFLD treatment had him falling past the safety net and then on the ground, with people gathered around him. My apologies for the imprecise wording.

If you don't see one of your favorite consumer goods, recreational activities or cosmic worries on that list, do not fear not. It is only a partial compendium of panic-mongering, gleaned from watching some 20 hours--but still fewer than one quarter--of the nightime sweeps newscasts on every major local news outlet.

Sweeps--the month-long periods when TV tries hardest because the Nielsen ratings then dictate advertising rates--is, of course, redundant in Chicago. We've got Dennis Rodman, who lives as if every day were a Sweeps day.

But every station, especially WMAQ-Ch. 5, is free to chronicle Rodman. Everyone had access to the same video of a geyser of fire in Washington, an inadvertent demolition derby on a Colorado highway, and a motorcycle daredevil losing that dare. And everybody, this time out, had crack after crack at O.J. Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey, TV news' favorite prematurely sexualized victim of at least one horrific crime.

But Sweeps demands that news directors develop something on their own, something that can be advertised in tantalizing promotional spots and that can be explored (or exploited) over a siesta-like three minutes or so, the better to justify the hype. That's where all the special reports, usually with alliterative names like "The Cow Cartilage Question," come in.

It is commonplace for critics of television, both professionals and those who play along at home, to slam Sweeps out of hand as tawdry descents into the fiery tunnels of tabloid journalism. That is not untrue, but it suggests that tabloid journalism is not practiced during other parts of the year and it also ignores that Sweeps can bring some solid, longer work to our screens.

It would be unfair not to point out examples of such that occurred during our sample period (primarily Feb. 5-13). Pam Zekman at WBBM-Ch. 2 broke interesting ground in the Operation Broken Shield police corruption story. Dick Kay at WMAQ-Ch. 5 first reported that an alleged ghost payroller had sent fat checks returning his salary to Mayor Daley's office back in 1995, hard evidence casting doubt on Daley's denials of knowledge of the situation. WLS-Ch. 7's Chuck Goudie turned in a thoughtful story on gambling among college athletes, though the "Win, Lose or Die" title went sensationally beyond what Goudie reported.

Also: WBBM had the guts to lead a Sweeps newscast with Jay Levine's long, feel-good (too insistently so) piece on the continued recovery of a paralyzed police officer. Some of WMAQ's flurry of consumer reporting managed to be thought provoking even amid the images of teddy bears catching fire atop light bulbs. And WFLD-Ch. 32 had some great gotcha video of Chicago crossing guards loafing on the job.

Other work, to borrow the tone of Sweeps promotions, raised compelling questions about what might be happening behind the closed doors at the television news operations whose efforts millions of people watch:

- Internet menace! At least two stations chimed in on potential dangers to kids utilizing the moment's buzz medium. WMAQ's Renee Ferguson was first with an alarmist, anemic two-night effort called "Cyber Seduction." Like so many Sweeps reports, it made a worst-case, freak scenario--Internet sexual predators luring your child into a meeting--sound commonplace. Special Sweeps technique: Producer poses as 14-year-old girl to demonstrate how on-line strangers talk dirty to kids. Mitigating factor: At the very end of night two, Ferguson injected notes of common sense that undermined much of the prior scary stuff.

- Really hot wheels! As a sports anchor, WLS' Mark Giangreco is a formidable presence, possessing a keen wit and smart sensibility surpassed, locally, only by WFLD's Bruce Wolf (who remains unfathomably stuck on mornings). But Giangreco and WLS came away with eggy faces during the ostensibly funny "Make Mark Do Your Job" feature segment that ran right before the Chicago Auto Show opening.